SCREAMING TREES - The SST years (1987-1989)

We haven't even gotten to all of the slagging the Screaming Trees' indie records get in Lanegan's book.  The next chapters of Sing Backwards And Weep, that I haven't written about yet, just keep piling on the abuse.  Besides continuing to go out of his way to emphasize that his "only contribution to Screaming Trees songwriting had been attempting to change the most egregious of Lee Conner's lyrics to something less embarrassing to sing," he has a few more digs at how his perception that their work was second rate shaped everything that he did at this point.  He describes mortification every time he hears one of their songs in the wild, hammering on his involvement in this band as a source of humiliation.  Pretty strong stuff.  This is what he's reacting against when talking about trying to make something that was authentically his with The Winding Sheet.  So given that Lanegan himself is almost violently dismissive of his own breakthrough work, and so anxious to make it clear that it's not his voice, where does it fit into an exploration of his career?  In this case, it means we burn through the next three records in one go.  I skipped the EPs for sanity's sake, because I have limits.   But there were three full-lengths that the Trees released with SST, I did spend time with each one, and I have a few thoughts.

Even If And Especially When (1987)

I maybe diminished the retro vibe when I was writing about Clairvoyance and so on.  Well,   "Transfiguration," "Girl Behind The Mask," the oddly catchy "You Know Where It's At," and others here are more than anything else, backwards-looking songs.  Retro-rock bands pop up from time to time throughout history, so I don't think it'd be too wrong to think of Lee's songs as falling somewhere on the giant axis that also includes the Black Keys, the Raconteurs, and so on.  That sort of thing only works for me if the hooks are straightforward and simple... look at me basically saying that I haven't listened to much psychedelic rock... so I like that "Transfiguration" has a legit hook, and my favorite Pix performance on the record.

Elsewhere, we have some rock, a lot of noodling, a bit of organ, and basically songs that're all over the place.  Think of "Flying," some lively Conner Bros. dueling that needs a real chorus, or a next gear, or something to make it a song that I'll ever think about again.  I like the central rock riff of "World Painted" and hate that it has nothing to do with the rest of the song.  And Lanegan, often pushed back in the mix, is all over the place, along with his guys.  He's sometimes doing his goofy voices, sometimes mumbling, sometimes bellowing, and not always with clear rhyme or reason.  Of his various faces, Lanegan sounds more comfortable at this point in chatty mode.  It's maybe weird that "Cold Rain," which meanders as much do any of the ones I'm complaining about, is not only one of my favorite tracks on the record, but my favorite Lanegan performance here; I think just a better song, with good harmonics, especially on the parts with dueling vocals.

The tracks that continue side B actually sell "high-charged chaos" rather than "meandering" - where was that all record?  I wish I could explain why the second half of Even If seems closer to being all over the place in an exciting way rather than all over the place in an unfocused, amateurish way.  Lanegan responds with some vocal intensity in "The Pathway" and "Back Together."  Like he's following the band.  Like the intensity comes from the other guys, and he follows.  This is the performance of someone who's standing motionless on stage while the others rampage around.  He also follows the band to some annoying places; I'm frequently in the wrong mood to appreciate the cartoony vocal stylings on something like "In The Forest."  There's a fine line between fiery irreverance and just sounding obnoxious.  This record overall is still more potential than execution, but the potential is getting harder and harder to ignore.

Invisible Lantern (1988)

So, my conception of the Screaming Trees has always been the grunge band that never actually rocked very hard.  The early records have supported that in a different way, providing this messy psychedelic rock without much overt punk.  What we're retrospectively calling the proto-grunge scene existed at this point, and bands like Green River were putting out music that was way louder and aggressive than the out-of-control band full of huge lumbering men could seem to manage.

Despite having the most striking LSD-trip of a record cover that the Trees ever managed - seriously, look at that cover!  It's great! - Invisible Lantern opens with "Ivy."  Have we finally arrived?  The song  is a bit of a kick, taking the formula of a driving and above all fuzzed out riff and letting Lanegan bellow the lyrics whenever they get vaguely twisted.  The rising and falling action, the classic contrast of softer and louder... this sounds grungy and unhinged in a way that lives up to the band's reputation.  Catchy too!  It makes me wish the Trees had turned over a full new leaf with renewed purpose.  Now, once "Walk Through To This Side" starts, the listener quickly hears that the songs are going to be more similar to the last recprd (and the one before) than different, so it's not a sea change.  I do think that extra level of volume and distortion is a good extra ingredient for the Trees.  Lantern sounds better than its predecessors to me, and the songwriting is stronger here overall.  Rockier numbers like "Smokerings" and the title track do convincingly rock.  A fairly straightforward pop melody like "Night Comes Creeping" has a clear tune whilst the sounds layered onto it make it loud, messy in a good way... grungy, I guess.  Sure, writ large, a hypothetical singer who's deeply frustrated with his own band's direction probably won't see his opinion change very much.  As a listener, though, Invisible Lantern is far and away my favorite of the Trees' indie-era records.

Focusing on the vocals, I do think Lanegan is more in his element than he was on Even If.  Sometimes the songs support him and sometimes they don't, but he's figured out how he wants to sing them.  That sensation of him playing dress-up or doing a voice is basically gone at this point.  He's honed his chatty mid-range that he employs for most verses (I even kinda like the way the lazy delivery offsets the lively riffing from Lee and Van on "The Second I Awake," even though I "ought" to hate that), his harmonics that show off his resonance like on the chorus of "Lines & Circles," his low-range when songs call for him to get deep and soulful, and the aforementioned throat-ripping yelling.  The bellows sound controlled now, like he knows when he wants to use them.  Even on "She Knows" he's not so much being dragged out of control and off key by the music so much as riding it, using it as a basis for the controlled chaos.  Call it working on himself in lieu of confronting the Connors, but (the rather histrionic "Shadow Song" aside) his work on Lantern strikes me as a much more confident, assured vocal performance than on the preceding records.

Musically, "Ivy" aside, I'm actually most interested in the slow numbers.  The Trees explore their haunting, quiet side way more successfully than in the past on "Grey Diamond Desert," with Lee going for ambient fuzz rather than riffs knowing that he'll be wonderfully augmented by keys from producer Steve Fisk.  I was going to lump "Even If" in with that statement too, although I guess really only the intro and outro are actually slow; that's quite a good one too, working wonders with the organ part and the shift between the different vocal sections.*  Lanegan is in rare form in storyteller mode with a touch of the blues enthusiast we'd soon come to know when moaning about drunken tears, and, well, he sounds great.  Whether he was willing to admit it or not, "Grey Diamond Desert" would sound right at home on the sort of record he'd soon proudly put his own name on...

Buzz Factory (1989)

...but first, one more indie full-length from the Trees.  

On my first listen, my heart sank when the first few songs went by as a bunch of nothing.  "Where The Twain Shall Meet" on its own would be a solid opener, a moderately successful grungy loud-soft take on typical Trees material, with pulsating rock riffage with a singer who does mood and sometimes ethereal.  I'm hung up on the limited hook, the fact that it's basically just one riff, and Lanegan seeming a little off key on the chorus.  Close but not quite there.  And then the record kinda keeps going in that vein, with throwback riffs it sounds like we've heard before and songs without hooks, choruses, or points.

I think the song that best lands what they're trying for overall is "Black Sun Morning."  It took a while, but that one won me over with the chaotic verses being offset by what I can only call a drunken Washington cowboy sort of chorus.  Said chorus isn't just hooky, but transitions neatly into the next section, with Pix setting the agenda.  Although it's probably a little too early to claim to see the Trees and Nirvana directly influencing each other, that sort filtering pop hooks through soft-loud dynamics with distortion pedals way up must have been in the water.  The song works for the same reasons Nirvana's "Bleach" does, albeit not as well.  Meanwhile, in "Subtle Poison," we get an early attempt at the "post-grunge" trick of building a song around the cavernous echo of one chord.  At its best, this record sets a mood that's haunting and unsettling.  Throw in a few more successful experiments, including, "Yard Trip #7," which comes close to working, although the simplistic rhyme scheme holds it back a bit, and one can't deny that the record has its moments.   I'm not sure how to take "Flower Web," one that makes me want to reference Spin̈al Tap's hippie phase with its jangly guitars and ah-ah background vocals; the persistence with which it repeats its repetitive elements sometimes works for me and sometimes bores me, depending on the moment.  

At its worst, Buzz Factory seems tired.  Other than being a bit more "rock," an indistinct blur of more of the same stuff.  I've praised the overall increase in volume, or at least distortion, and that stands; just saying that in and of itself, that's not enough to make a memorable song for me.   And "Windows," "Too Far Away" (sans the fiery outro), "Revelation Revolution," etc, just not very memorable.  The Beatles-worship of the main line of "The Looking Glass Cracked?"  Heard this band do this thing already.  Although at least Lanegan is leaning into his deep range and has shed the unpleasant nasal tone that was present through Even If, he actually seems to have taken a step backward compared to Lantern in his vocal choices, not using his scream effectively or even hitting the right notes.  As much as he wanted to disown it, is it possible that he's part of the problem with the record?  I just feel like either he couldn't find something to grab onto to sell the weaker songs, or he just didn't care anymore.  This is the sound of a man about to wander away to do his own music whilst doing a ridiculous amount of drugs.

The dichotomy of Buzz Factory is neatly encapsulated in closer "End Of The Universe."  At first it sounds like just another song - are we still doing strained plane metaphors, like in the "Orange Airplane" days?  Lanegan, in the middle of the mix as usual, without a real tune as usual, sounds bored as usual.  Then the band takes over and, sans its singer, the song becomes a raucous jam that clicks, as Pix and Van finally get a spotlight for their playing (often great throughout the record, often wasted in middling songs).  The second half of the middle section slows down but stays heavy, and not wanting to be left out now that Trees are finally killing it, Langean chimes in with "yeah, whoa" stuff that just takes things to the next level.  The slide back to the original verse leaves the listener understanding the whole song better.  If too much of Factory, and the way "End Of The Universe" starts, illustrate why Lanegan felt so desperate to move on from this band, then the record's stronger moments, definitely including what EOTU becomes, show why he kept seeing something in these guys, and kept getting sucked back in.

Summary comments, such that they are

Again, I recognize that there's more Screaming Trees music from this era, but surely this is enough of a representative sample to concoct some vague post-hoc narrative about what it says about Mark Lanegan as a musician.  

Well, since it's his earliest recorded work, it's hard not to see Lanegan gradually finding his voice over the course of the '80s.  Maybe it's an incremental thing.  In his book, he has little to say about the music itself for the reasons already summarized, but does talk about the performances and the process of making music.  He describes himself as a dictator in the studio, because if he didn't take charge, nobody would, and nothing would get done.  Over the course of the SST years, we see Lanegan first controlling band operations, then controlling how he uses his voice to find the right pocket in Lee's songs - he'd mastered that by Insvisible Lantern -, and then maybe possibly influencing them to listen to and take on the sound of the sort of indie rock music that incorporates loud fuzzed-out sounds and a punk ethos.  Somewhere over the course of the decade, Lanegan ended up as a guy who only sounded like himself, and without whom it'd be impossible to imagine the Screaming Trees.  As starts to a career go, it's definitely a start.

Even If And Especially When

Favorite track:  "Transfiguration"

Runner up:  "Cold Rain"

Least favorite track:  "World Painted"

Rating:  2.5/5

Invisible Lantern

Favorite track:  "Grey Diamond Desert"

Runner up:  "Ivy"

Least favorite track:  "Shadow Song"

Rating:  3.5/5

Buzz Factory

Favorite track:  "End Of The Universe"

Runner up: "Subtle Poison"

Least favorite track:  "Too Far Away"

Rating:  2/5

On to more of Sing Backwards And Weep, whenever I get around to it!

 

*Although what's with the lazy fade-out?  Sounds like the place where they'd go nuts live, and that energy could be used on the record.